When the artist Frank Frazetta passed away ten days ago, we saw a lot of hastily-assembled tributes to his work. Somehow, not many people pointed out Fire and Ice, the film on which Frazetta collaborated with animation director Ralph Bakshi.

But the film will get attention now because, after years of trying to get a deal together, Robert Rodriguez has bought the rights to remake Fire and Ice as a live-action film through his own Troublemaker Studios.

The awesome Ralph Bakshi and I have been working it out for a while, and [Fire and Ice is] now a TROUBLEMAKER STUDIOS PICTURE. What’s cool is, unlike past projects that I’d get involved with that would get stalled for various reasons, I control the rights to this one. So it’s actually in my power to set it up and get it made, which wasn’t the case on other projects.

He also summarizes the reason he’d like to remake Fire and Ice:

[Frank Frazetta has] been so influential to artists and filmmakers, and yet we still haven’t seen a Frazetta world truly come to life in a live action film, so that’s what I’d want to do with the FIRE and ICE project.

I’ve always loved the look of Fire and Ice, but even as a kid I thought it was a pretty dull story. Conan the Barbarian comic writers Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas wrote the tale of an evil Ice Lord who slowly steamrolls over his enemies and soon-to-be underlings with a glacial fortress. He kidnaps Teegra, daughter of the lord of Fire Keep. A villager named Larn tries to rescue Teegra and destroy the Ice Lord.

So, yeah. Just above boilerplate fantasy stuff. But man, the movie so often looks awesome — it really replicates the look of Frazetta’s work, and the backgrounds are often stunning. Given that the Frazetta look is what could so easily be lost in the transition to live-action, I’m not too excited here yet. If you’re not familiar with the film, check out the trailer below.